International Teacher Education Conference 2014 1

International Teacher Education Conference 2014
Students’ Emotional Responses Related to the Teaching Activity
Ante Kolak ª *
ª Ph.D., University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of Pedagogy
Abstract
In this paper, the author deals with students' emotional responses that occur during the teaching process. The
author distinguishes two broad categories of students' emotional responses. The first category consists of
academic emotions, while achievement emotions stand out as a separate category. Emotions play an important
role in the classroom since students remember emotionally appealing contents longer and devote to them more
studiously. Also, with the help of attitudes associated with emotional judgements, academic achievement can be
predicted. Students are more successful in learning activities in which they feel joy and pleasure as opposed to
boredom. Within this broad area, the author focuses on the positive functions of students’ negative responses,
and singles out only those emotional responses that are most important for the teaching activities: pleasure,
boredom, apathy, the feeling of not being accepted, rejection, inferiority, worthlessness, worry, trust, doubt,
pride and self-esteem.
Keywords. Students’ emotional responses, teaching, achievement emotions, academic emotions
Introduction
It is known that the teaching process is full of emotional responses. Some authors destinguish between
positive and negative (Chabot and Chabot, 2009). Everyone is familiar with the emotional responses to teaching
such as : shyness, fear, dissatisfaction, envy, disappointment, hope and satisfaction, rejection, inferiority,
worthlessness, worry, trust, doubt, pride and self respect. All these can be categorized into the emotional
reactions directed towards the subject of the teaching process (students,teachers,parents) and the emotional
reactions between the participants of the teaching process ( students relations). From the point of view of the
school pedagogy it is interesting to distinguish between the emotional reactions that happen inside the teaching
process and those that engage outside school. From the didactic perspective it is interesting to observe the
emotional reactions that occur during the teaching process (boredom, excitement) and those related to the results
of the teaching process (fear, anger, sadness). In this paper the author will use the term academic emotions when
referring to them.Reinhard Pekrun 2006. Uses this term to refer to all emotions that occur during teaching
process and its evaluation, in other words all emotions experienced by students in the school environment.
"Academic emotions are defined as emotions closely related to the process and results of the learning
process."(Pekrun, 2006.:316) The author of academic emotions distinguishes them according to different
criteria. According to the direction of emotional responses he differentiates between those that are related to the
teaching activities (emotional responses that appear during learning process or during teaching process such as
enjoyment of subject or boredom during lesson) and those related to the result of the teaching process (the
emotion of achievement). The latter type can be called exam emotional responses since they are related to the
emotions studens go through immediately before, during or after the examination process. The emotional
reactions of students during the teaching process are not new but uptil recently this hasn't received enough
attention in educational studies. This comes as no surprise considering the focus on the cognitive and the
perception of emotinal as something irrational and outside reason. Although it is popularly said that "the heart
wants what the heart wants" without being in touch with the reason , the real truth is different, the ratio cannot
function without the support of emotions (Slunjski, 2013:14)
Pestalozzi insisted on the importance of the unity of heart, mind and hands in the learning process. This
perspective is supported by the recent discoveries in the field of neuroscience that are more welcomed into the
field of pedagogy and didactics. Researches point towards the key role emotions play in the process of thinking,
memorizing and learning.(Salovey,Sluyter,1994; Boller,1999; Bognar,2009; Burman,2001) The research of the
emotional responses of students in the teaching process reveals that the dominant emotions are boredom and fear
and that the negative emotions are overall predominant.(Kolak,Majcen:2011; Bognar,Dubovicki, 2012) It is also
E-mail address: akolak@ffzg.hr
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